DoJ: Microsoft documentation “substantially complete”

The US Department of Justice has decided that the documentation Microsoft …

In the latest joint status report regarding its 2002 antitrust settlement with Microsoft, the US Department of Justice has concluded that the documentation the software maker provides to other companies is now "substantially complete." Still, the organization noted that "a small number of documents require substantial rewriting or reorganization." In other words, when the documents are considered as a whole, they appear to cover the information required by the templates in a reasonably comprehensible manner, but there are some exceptions. Most noticeably, the DoJ mentioned that Microsoft has yet to write test suites for the Microsoft Communications Protocol Program (MCPP) protocol that work with Windows 7.

The best part of this latest development, as far as Redmond is concerned, is the fact that the company can start collecting royalties again for licensing some protocols, even though the documents are still unfinished and there is much work to be done. The MCPP allowed vendors to license certain protocols from Microsoft, but the DoJ concluded that the quality of the documentation was not up to par, and thus Microsoft engineers were ordered to rewrite major parts of it. Currently, 55 companies are licensing patents for communications protocols and 42 of these would be required to pay royalties.

The settlement requires that Microsoft makes technical documentation available so as to allow other vendors to make products that are interoperable with the various releases of the Windows operating system. In May 2006, an "interim royalty credit" was established that allowed the software giant to charge licensees on paper royalties for the use of protocols, but then gave those licensees a 100 percent credit for those fees. In return for this credit, licensees were asked to provide feedback and report any errors or technical deficiencies in the documentation that they might discover during their development processes (finding issues was not required, but reporting on ones that were found pretty much was). The end goal was to help Microsoft improve the documentation, but as an added bonus, the credit made sure that licensees made sure to keep Redmond in line.

In March 2007, the DoJ said it was concerned that Microsoft was taking longer than expected to produce documentation on their server protocols, while Microsoft said the delays were unavoidable. In January 2008, a federal court judge extended the duration of antitrust sanctions imposed on Microsoft in the 2002 consent decree agreement until November 2009. In June 2008, the DoJ said Microsoft had made progress in its documentation offerings and licensing fees to third parties, though it made further suggestions about what could be improved.